Iraqi Court Acts to Free Suspect in Deadly Raid on G.I.’s

BAGHDAD — An Iraqi court has ordered the release of the last detainee handed over to Iraqi custody by the departing United States military, citing insufficient evidence to prosecute him on accusations that he orchestrated a deadly 2007 assault against American forces, his lawyer said Monday.

Although the ruling was automatically appealed, it added fuel to concerns among American officials that transferring the prisoner, Ali Musa Daqduq, to Iraqi authorities in mid-December had cleared the way for his eventual release — a development that would constitute a propaganda coup for Iran and Shiite militias operating in Iraq.

American authorities have said Mr. Daqduq, a Lebanese citizen, had confessed to being a Hezbollah operative who helped to plot a raid in January 2007 by Shiite militants against American forces in Karbala, a Shiite holy city in southern Iraq. The militants, who wore American-style uniforms and carried forged identity cards, killed five American soldiers: one in the raid and four who were captured and whose bodies were later dumped by a road.

The fate of Mr. Daqduq became a vexing political and diplomatic question during the American military’s last days in Iraq. American officials debated whether departing forces should take Mr. Daqduq with them for prosecution. Some Republicans had urged that he be tried before a military commission at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the man accused of being the architect of the Sept. 11 attacks and four co-defendants were arraigned over the weekend.

“This confirms my fears that transferring Daqduq to Iraqi custody would result in his release,” Senator Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire, said in a statement, adding, “If Daqduq is released, there is little doubt that he’ll resume terrorist activities.”

But an agreement signed by the administration of President George W. Bush gave the Iraqi government final say over the fate of all detainees in Iraq.

Ultimately, Iraqi leaders asserted their sovereignty in the high-profile case and took control of Mr. Daqduq. He was one of hundreds of detainees handed over to the Iraqis, a process that is now fitfully being repeated in Afghanistan as the military prepares to wind down the war there.

American officials hoped that the Iraqis would prosecute Mr. Daqduq on charges that would keep him imprisoned for a long time. Problems with the evidence had made it unlikely that he would ever be prosecuted for the attack on United States troops.

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Although military officials said he had confessed freely and that his interrogation had not included any harsh techniques, his statements to American military interrogators would probably be deemed inadmissible in Iraqi court. But the Obama administration had hoped that he would instead face charges of illegally entering Iraq, a crime that could result in a 10-year prison sentence.

At the same time, however, prosecutors in the military commissions system quietly swore out war crimes charges against him in January, the first time that the system, set up after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, would be used against a defendant who was not part of the war against Al Qaeda.

The charges, first reported by The New York Times in February, were apparently intended to be the basis for an extradition request, as a fallback option should the Iraqis decide not to prosecute Mr. Daqduq or if he received only a short sentence. It was not clear whether the State Department had made such an extradition request, a matter that it has declined to discuss.

It was also not clear whether the Iraqis would agree to extradite anyone to the military commissions system, as opposed to a civilian court — or, if they did, where the commission would be convened. The Obama administration has said that Iraqis would never agree to send anyone to Guantánamo, and has instead explored establishing a tribunal at the military base in Charleston, S.C.

American officials in Baghdad and Washington did not immediately comment on the ruling.

The immediate appeal in the case means that Mr. Daqduq will stay in jail for at least several months more as his case wends through Iraq’s creeping justice system. But Mr. Daqduq’s lawyer, Abdul Mahdi Mitairi, said that his client had been in custody “without justification” since the Americans captured him in 2007 and that he deserved to be freed.

“It was mostly flimsy evidence,” said Mr. Mitairi, who also sits on the political committee of Moktada al-Sadr, the anti-American Shiite cleric. “It does not even rise to the level of a hearing because they do not even have a witness.”

A version of this article appears in print on May 8, 2012, on Page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Iraqi Court Acts to Free Suspect in Deadly Raid on G.I.’s. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe